


You Can't Always Get What You Want

by Joanne_c



Category: Grease (1978)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post canon, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 08:03:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1850563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joanne_c/pseuds/Joanne_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandy reflects on the changes of the past ten years as a new decade dawns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can't Always Get What You Want

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



I can’t believe it’s been eleven years since I met Danny. Ten years since we made a big change so we could meet halfway, instead of existing in different worlds that only touched sometimes.

It wasn’t about looks, it was never that. Riz got it, and Frenchy, and Kenickie a little as well, but a few other people – Jan, Marty, the rest of the T-Birds and others just thought we’d changed our looks, that I’d gotten closer to him, and he’d gotten closer to me, so we could, I don’t know, walk in each other’s world. But that wouldn’t have been enough.

We had to change ourselves. Meet partway, or we could never have had the same relationship we’ve had for ten years. I think that’s why Riz and Kenickie get it – they had to change too. From kids who were rebelling to people who wanted to be together. Danny and I, we needed to be a little bit more like each other, without letting go of who we were.

Like the song says, you can’t always get what you want. In an ideal world, Danny would be the kind of guy who wears suits, who’d come to tea with my parents and wouldn’t make mistakes – still – on which fork he should use. Or I’d be the kind of girl who can dance all night, then come home and have a great spread on the table for breakfast. So it’s more like I have to whisper to him where he’s going wrong, and we go dancing, but he accepts we have toast and coffee the next morning. It’s not a bad way to be, and I know he’s loosened me up, in a good way. He tells me I’ve made him less loose, but he smiles when he says it, so I know it’s in a good way. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t still be here.

That doesn’t scare me as much as it once might have. Maybe it’s worrying about so many other things. We live in a pretty scary time, and just because Danny and Kenickie have been lucky with the draft, doesn’t mean that’ll happen for everyone. In fact, I know it’s true that it doesn’t, one of our guys, our T-Birds, is over there now. Every time the phone rings, a part of me wonders if it’s going to be bad news. It’s hard to keep it out of your mind when it’s on TV and in the newspapers all the time.

Riz and I’ve promised each other that if either of our guys gets called up, we’ll be there for each other. It’s a promise we both know we might have to keep, and it helps, knowing that we’ll have that support. But I pray we’ll never have to rely on the promise we made.

I look back at our days in high school and think how innocent we all were, though Riz would laugh if I said that to her. She’s never been innocent, she says, but it’s not true. We weren’t hardened and jaded by life, by the changes in the world that we couldn’t have seen coming. It was like we were in a bubble, that didn’t quite prepare us for what was next, but there isn’t anything that could have. We’d have done so many things differently if we’d known, we’ve all said that. But if we hadn’t done what we did, college and a wedding after graduation, moved into houses close to each other, would we have had anything to hold onto? I don’t know. 

I still remember Danny proposing, he actually got down on one knee – in front of Riz and Kenickie, no less. Sure they’d been engaged since high school, and I think Riz helped Danny pick the ring out – just a vibe I got, I could be wrong – but still, we were all out at dinner, and he kneels on the floor and pulls out a ring. I’m blushing redder than my lipstick, and saying yes, making sure he knows that it’s a yes, because he needs to know that, wouldn’t want Danny to think I didn’t want to be his wife.

I’m not sure there was ever anything I wanted more. Well, I have to say I did want our kids as much. One of each, and a second girl a couple of years later. Danny likes to say we outnumber him and Robbie, but I think he just doesn’t want to deal with the boys who are like he was when they grow up. It’ll be okay, I’ll remind him of how he was, and he’ll figure out they are about as clueless as he was. He’ll still give them the fatherly talk about getting the girls home by curfew, but he’ll hold back on some of the stuff that used to make me wonder how we ever got out of the house.

Yes, we’re lucky, all of us. Sure it hasn’t been perfect the last ten years. Danny and I nearly split up for good three times in college and at least once before the wedding. He’d say twice, but I refuse to admit the time he was so drunk he couldn’t even get out the words to say he didn’t deserve me. Luckily he doesn’t drink like that any more, not that he doesn’t still party. He’s just figured out his limitations and where they start and end. Mine took a little more time to figure out, because I’d never pushed mine. That’s one thing Danny’s given me, he’s helped me find those limitations. He’s never tried to push me beyond them, not since those few times in high school, which seem another lifetime ago now.

Ten years. The end of another decade fast approaching. I wonder how things will change in the next ten years. Will there be more people we never imagined in our lives? I’m sure there will. Will we do things we never thought we would? I’m sure of it. Life is change, life doesn’t stay still. But life is a great and amazing adventure.

I do know I’ll have Danny beside me for those years.


End file.
